What changed when they automated
What changed when a California winery stopped hand stacking 15 kilogram wine cases
Martin Ray Winery ran a bottling line where employees stacked wine cases by hand all day. It installed a collaborative palletizer built on a UR20. The vendor publishes 6 to 10 picks a minute, a prior manual labor cost of about 100,000 dollars a year, and an 18 month payback it describes as its own claim.
The short answer
A winery automated one end-of-line station so its crew no longer lifts about 15 kilogram cases all day. The vendor publishes a rate of 6 to 10 picks per minute, states the prior manual palletizing labor cost the winery about 100,000 US dollars a year, and claims an 18 month payback. The account below is the maker's own case story, so read every number as the vendor published it, not as an audited result.
What the job looked like before
The bottling line ran and employees stacked each case by hand onto pallets, repetitive lifting of cases around 15 kilograms for the length of the shift. The winery wanted the crew off that task while the line kept its pace.
What they put in
A Robotiq PE20 Lean Palletizing solution built on a Universal Robots UR20 collaborative arm with a Robotiq PowerPick 30 vacuum gripper. The vendor lists a 32 kilogram maximum case weight for the solution.
What changed, in their numbers
Cases of about 15 kilograms handled at 6 to 10 picks per minute in this application, published by the vendor. The vendor states prior manual palletizing labor cost about 100,000 dollars a year. Payback of 18 months, a vendor claim. System price was not published.
What this does not tell you
It does not publish the system price, so the 18 month figure is the vendor's arithmetic, not yours. It does not say how many shifts the line runs or how seasonal the work is, and wineries are seasonal, so the payback may already assume part year use. And 6 to 10 picks a minute is modest; a line that runs faster at peak needs a different cell or a second arm.
What to verify in your own plant
Your case output at peak bottling speed, with a stopwatch, and whether the robot's rate covers it with margin on the fastest run rather than on average. Your case weight and stack height against the gripper and arm limits. Clamp truck or pallet jack access around a two pallet cell. And how the cell earns its keep in the off months.
Sources: https://robotiq.com/resource-center/case-studies/martin-ray and https://www.automatedwarehouseonline.com/robotiq-automates-palletizing-for-martin-ray-winery/
If you want your own line put in this frame, describe it to Joe, the concierge on this site: cases a minute at peak, case weight, shifts. It is free, and it will tell you plainly when one shift does not pencil.
Related on this site
- Palletizing
- I never thought we could afford a palletizer. Here is how the analysis plays out
- Size for peak, not average
- Robots for food and beverage plants
- The casebook of published deployments
The economics rest on one number the winery could name: what hand stacking cost per year. Know yours before you shop, and time your own peak case rate against the robot's.
Put it to the test on your own job
Tell Joe what you are running and he will apply this to your numbers, including telling you when a robot is the wrong answer.
More notes